macbeth

Now if you are suggesting that I expect an owner of a business to want a return, then yes I'd expect he does. Ashley has invested however much to own the business. Most of his investment went to the previous owners, but lots will have gone to try and reduce the debt. I expect he'll be putting the money has spent in as a loan to the business and will be looking for a return on that loan. I'm not particularly happy with this as he will be taking money out of the club. I can't see any other way around it though. He has inherited huge debts somebody at some point was going to have to pay for them. Clearly the previous owners didn't know how to do it, we just have to hope Ashely does. The thing that should not be forgotten though is that the last time we ended up in a mess John Hall lent the club money, and got it back with interest. We didn't care as it was the right thing for the club at the time. Financially it is far worse when Ashley took over, he though has at least been left with a team in the top division. He is taking less of a risk on the football side than John Hall did, but with a £200m gamble rather than a £2m gamble. We are going to have to put with him getting his return, lets hope he's as successful as John Hall, and also that he doesn't have a son he wants to leave it all to. Of course the other way for Ashley to make money would be to invest even more, make it successful, and get someone to buy it off him at a profit. One thing I am sure of is that Ashley of probably has more idea what he's doing than I do

And what are you on about, what do I want from Ashley, what do you think I want from Ashley I really don't know. You are one of these people who answer questions with questions, or "it's obvious". You bemoan rightly McKeag's for incompetence, you extol the footballing successes of Shepherd&Hall, what do you want from Ashley. For example if the next 5 were the same as the next 5 would that be okay, both on the pitch and off it. So would 3rd, 5th, 14th, 7th and 12th be okay, with a CL qualifier, couple of Uefa qualifiactions, and a couple of Intertoto qualifications, and a FA Cup semi.? Would you also be happy with Ashley taking a net amount of money out of the club, of roughly £12m ? I asked for an opinion last tie, this time I'm giving you a choice. Take either to answer

It's also doubled in less than 1 page too. That's impressive. Fact is, all anyone is going on here is a newspaper article which doesn't give the source of the numbers it's using and the service it claims is being provided (ie simply storage). If there's any real source of information, then please share it, otherwise I'll consider it clearly nothing but another silly rumour. The reported figure was £150k per year, the club accounts say that it is over £300k.

at what level do you view things as no longer being "insignificant". I'm not trying to trick you or anything. The £300k per year for the warehouse you suggest is "insignificant". You have often suggested that the Shepherd/Hall salaries of ~£500k per year were okay. You regualrly say that the dividends would have made no difference if they'd stayed within the club, so £4m a year doesn't count either. If that has all happened and isn't worth really getting worked up about, in five years time looking back at what level would you view Ashley as taking out too much? And I know you'll die to compare today with 20 years ago, but dinnae. I'm trying to find out what your hope would be from Ashley.

Couple of points Shepherd knew for a long time that the Halls wanted out. In 2003 the club paid the Halls £4.5m to buy shares off them. If this wasn't a big warning sign of their intentions then I'm not sure what he needed. Maybe he needed them talking to anyone else who expressed an interest. It was so obvious that he even commented that it was affecting the day to day running of the club. He may have been surprised at the exact timing of the deal, but he is pushing it if he tries to suggest that he had no idea what they are thinking, or had no time to plan for it. The warehouse did cost SMP which is Bruce Shepherd's company, £175,000 to buy, and the payments made over the last 5 years, as reported by the club were 2006 £341,000 2005 £335,000 2004 £271,000 2003 £316,000 2002 £265,000 a total of over £1.5m Whether the there is any moral wrong-doing is clearly up to each individual to decide on. The question that should be raised is why Bruce Shepherd could not bring his obvious money-making skills to bear as fully at NUFC as he could at SMP. Lets hope Ashley can do better at transferring his skills to the club There is public record that John Hall (and hsi wife) lent the club money when they were in a financial mess. This is why there is a warmth from most people towards him and where the "they deserve their return" comments come from. Conversely most people don't see Douglas Hall, or Freddie or Bruce Shepherd actually financially contributing, just taking.

whoo there. Where did this come from ?? Why should anyone, be they born in Benwell or Bermondsey be expected to run a business witehout an expectation of return? Shepherd was paid £500,000 per ye war to run the club, ouglas Hall helped him and was paid £450,000 per year for his contribution. Shepherd ran the club without making a profit, we lost £70m in his 8 years, so the proof is there that 'zero profit' is doable. If you meant to ask about a return for investing in the club, rather than just running the club then that is different. If he is looking to invest to get a return on his money then he will have to invest more than he has so far, to speculate to get a return. If he does invest his own money it will be the first time this has happenedd since 1998. The previous owners have not invested any money sine the club became a PLC. They have taken out their profit (as you would put it) but have never put in. Shepherd played the "I'm a fan" card while draining it of cash. If Ashley drains it of cash he will lose out in the long run. Shepherd never took the long-term view. He took out as much as he could as quickly as he could, so that he needn't worry about the long-term future of the club, he was set up for life. If Ashley doesn't take the long-term approach he may lose money. If he takes out the £35m that H&S did the club may well disappear. No person/organisation can overspend the way NUFC have done. Eventually the banks will say stop. If you spent 20% mroe than your annual salary every year would the banks keep lending you more ?

Yeah, I know why. It's because, pulled out of context, it's a dumb question. We shouldn't have got into the position where we had to go even deeper into debt to buy a striker. "Backing the manager" as the sole requirement of a chairman glosses over the fact that he's supposed to be managing club revenues in such a way as to make sustainable progress. No one can say that Peter Ridsdale didn't back David O'Leary. Look at Leeds now. that was different

you forogt to mention Adam Crozier still love you consistency though, that's nice in a man

Excellent, enlighten us. Well, as you clearly don't know, and you may tell the younger lads the wrong answer, being a bit of a bandwagon jumper, basically its because nobody was interested in the club, because they sold all their best players, who all wanted to go, spent years in the 2nd division, considered a promotion battle as fighting for honours, and once achieved, were happy to stay up, as cheaply as possible.[glow=red,2,300] [macbeth would like this sort of approach][/glow] Of course, when you sell your best players and buy 2nd rate players - for years and years - and consider 15th in the old 1st division and staying up to be the height of ambition and success, then the fans who have higher ambitions sort of stop going to watch the club. I mean, who wants to support a club who sell their best players and get relegated and spend years in the old 2nd division buying players out of the 3rd and 4th divisions on a regular basis. A cousin of mine spent 10-15 years telling me that I was mad for watching "that rubbish" All of a sudden, when the Halls and Shepherd took over the club and appointed Keegan, he - and thousands of others - started going to the match again. They were attracted back by a board who they now slate. They also say they have "always supported the club". In fact, his name isn't Mick, or I could suspect you were him. Please feel free to make something up, I'm expecting it mackems.gif i love it when you you put words (and things) in my mouth

only just noticed this one Do you think a team that has finished below 9th over the last ten season his half decent ? Under Shepherd we have spent about a net £100m on players, and we still only have a half decent side. How much more do you think Shepherd should have borrowed to get a side that could get in the top half more than the bottom half ? Woudl £10m be right, or £20m, or £35m. You keep assuming that I didn't want to spend money. You'll never find me having said that. You will find me questioning how the people running the club could get us in such a bad position financially that we were losing £1m a month, and every summer we just HAD to borrow more because of the desperate situation we were in. I still love you though. Simple folk make me smile :smitten:

I would have preferred us to sign Martins out of money that had gone into the club. If H&S had not taken £35m out in the previous 8 years we could have signed Martins and re-signed Woodgate, and still had £15m left over. We had to borrow money to buy Martins, we shouldn't have needed to borrow. He didn't just cost £13m, he cost £13m plus a pile of interest. bump. I like bumping with NE5, he's so funny, he makes me feel happy inside

i've just seen your little by-line under your posts. The "The only way to get a top manager, like Souness, when he is already in a top job, is to pay his club huge compensation for their loss. - macbeth 16th April 2007" Thank you !! I'm sitting here giggling like a little girl, close to tears. mackems.gif mackems.gif mackems.gif I have to admit you win. Every negative thought I've ever had about you, as just been taken away. I will always smile when I think of you now. What a wonderful way to start the weekend :celb: As I suspected, you don't read, its been there for ages. Some admission that mind, "giggling like a little girl" it's cos I love ya :smitten:

i've just seen your little by-line under your posts. The "The only way to get a top manager, like Souness, when he is already in a top job, is to pay his club huge compensation for their loss. - macbeth 16th April 2007" Thank you !! I'm sitting here giggling like a little girl, close to tears. mackems.gif mackems.gif mackems.gif I have to admit you win. Every negative thought I've ever had about you, as just been taken away. I will always smile when I think of you now. What a wonderful way to start the weekend :celb:

That's bollocks actually as you're completely ignoring wages, and over 8 years wouldn't cover the cost of an extra Luque. But the money taken out by H&S would also have gained the club interest rather than having to pay it out. A win-win ! A better option (and one that takes the emotion out of players being worth it or not) for the dividend money would have been paying off the stadium mortgage. If the cash had been used for that instead of givign it away then the club would have no mortgage, rather than still owing lots off.

I'm sure Macbeth will be along in a moment to tell you that not spending then was exactly the right thing to do as the profit that year (before dividends) was only £4.3m, and the previous year it was -£3.1m (we spent £27.6m that year). At the time everything looked great. Wages under control, team improving, ready for another year in the CL. That was the time to build on the success. Instead the club spent nothing at all on players. They had invested well in the year before, but that summer not a penny was spent on improving the squad. In the meantime that summer the club did spend £8.5m. Not on players, not on the ground, not on anything that improved the club. Instead the club spent £4m on giving money away to shareholders. It then spent £4.5m buying back shares from the Hall family. That summer defined the priorities of the board for me. £8.5m to the Hall and Shepherd families, and nothing to stregthen the side. Either there was no money to spend so it should have gone nowhere, or there was money to spend and it should have gone to strengthening the squad. (That £8m was borrowed to give away, up till Ashley, we were still paying £500,000 per year in interest payments on those borrowings) I'm pretty sure that at this point NE5 will say £8.5m would only buy a Marcelino, so it would therefore make no difference. The "logic" behind that is that we should never buy players, we shoudl just give away £8.5m every year to shareholders instead.

If you "plan" to have a decent backup for your main ("trophy signing") striker being injured for a season you have to have 2 "trophy signing" strikers on the books or just buy cheaper strikers who are not as good. I don't see how you can blame the chairman for Owen's injury causing a shift in the transfer targets. If we'd have won a trophy I'm sure that would have been what he was most proud of. Did you expect him to say losing a couple of cup finals or coming 3rd in the league was his proudest moment? But why the fixation with a trophy signing ?? Of course I don't blame the chairman for Owen's injury. I do blame him for spending all that money on one player, to the detriment of the rest of the squad. It's lovely to have these players to watch, but the total emphasis on must-have attacking players (Owen, Luque, Emre, Parker, Duff, Martins) is that in the same period we also invest in Craig Moore, Olivier Bernard, Gooch, Ronnie Johnsen, Babayaro (and Bungsong). It's a team game. As I've mentioned before the cost of Michael Owen and Oba Martins could easily have been covered by the chairman and the Halls investing the money in the club, in the way we are expecting Ashely to. H&S took £35m out, lets hope Ashley doesn't.

Macbeth, what do you say to those people who believe (although mostly it is stated as an absolute truth) that the only way Ashley (or anyone who had taken over) can make money, and the only reason they would have bought the club is to invest heavily in the playing staff to eventually have us playing in the champions league? I don't think they're talking about an extra £4m per year on transfers and wages due to not taking a dividend either, their talking about making even heavier loses in the short term against hopefully making higher profits in the long term. All but the most naive of supporters realise that spending money does not guarantee success, so theoretically this spending over profit must go on indefinitely until a successful manager/team combination are found. Do you agree with this view, or think that they are wrong? the extra money, and therefore profits, can only come from the CL. In 2003 we had a turnover of £96m due to being int he CL, last year it was £83m. The rewards have grown hugely since 2003, with Chelsea getting £16m last season in appearance money never mind TV and gate receipts, and increased merchandising sales. The extra money from Sky for the next few years will help all clubs, but will probably just all end up in the pockets of the players. I don't believe anyone can get mega-rich owning a football club given how much it costs to buy them. Shepherd and Hall took the absolute maximum out that was feasible, any more and it would have collapsed. That didn't answer the question at all. Okay, sorry I ended up answering the question "do you think Ashley can only make money if the club is playing in the CL". You had too many bracketed comments in the question If you weren't asking whether you could only make money that way, but were actually asking whether Ashley would have to invest to get better players then... Yes, of course. We seem unable as a club to bring any young players through to be first team regulars, so we have to buy in to improve on, or even maintain where we are. Shepherd tried to do that but could only do it by borrowing more and more money, increasing our debt so that even if we if last year we'd finished 4th then the money from a single season in the CL still wouldn't cover the previous years borrowings. Hopefully Ashley's buy out means the interest payments that Shepherd had lumbered the club with will disappear, (Shepherd left us with £70m worth of debt currently paying interest at over 7.5%, or £5m per year) also there is £4m per year in dividends will too. So instantly ~£10m extra available. Then the Sky money goes up (for everyone) by £10m per year. So without doing much Ashley will have given the club £20m per year extra to play with. The downside of course is the contracts that Shepherd gave the players. The club were running at a loss of about £18m per year, so the Ashley sort out mentioned means we are just back to a flat picture. With the wages structure Shepherd left the club with the income would need to increase to about £120m to be profitable. This is way above what we have ever managed, even in the CL. So Ashley will have to dip into his back pocket and help if he wants the playing squad to improve and to get into the CL. No one has invested money in the club since 1997, it has been a one-way bleed since then.

Macbeth, what do you say to those people who believe (although mostly it is stated as an absolute truth) that the only way Ashley (or anyone who had taken over) can make money, and the only reason they would have bought the club is to invest heavily in the playing staff to eventually have us playing in the champions league? I don't think they're talking about an extra £4m per year on transfers and wages due to not taking a dividend either, their talking about making even heavier loses in the short term against hopefully making higher profits in the long term. All but the most naive of supporters realise that spending money does not guarantee success, so theoretically this spending over profit must go on indefinitely until a successful manager/team combination are found. Do you agree with this view, or think that they are wrong? the extra money, and therefore profits, can only come from the CL. In 2003 we had a turnover of £96m due to being int he CL, last year it was £83m. The rewards have grown hugely since 2003, with Chelsea getting £16m last season in appearance money never mind TV and gate receipts, and increased merchandising sales. The extra money from Sky for the next few years will help all clubs, but will probably just all end up in the pockets of the players. I don't believe anyone can get mega-rich owning a football club given how much it costs to buy them. Shepherd and Hall took the absolute maximum out that was feasible, any more and it would have collapsed.

I would have preferred us to sign Martins out of money that had gone into the club. If H&S had not taken £35m out in the previous 8 years we could have signed Martins and re-signed Woodgate, and still had £15m left over. We had to borrow money to buy Martins, we shouldn't have needed to borrow. He didn't just cost £13m, he cost £13m plus a pile of interest. How do you know we had to borrow money? Cos we already had an overdraft. There is also a line in the accounts saying "New borrowings" and it says £11m next to it. We took the "i-must-get-to-work-otherwise-i'll-not-be-able-to-earn-money-i-better-buy-a-ferrari" approach If we'd bought a Ferrari, i think we might have done a little better last year. Quite sensibly, the club invested £10m against future earnings growth to ensure we styaed in the prem and realised the increased revenues of £30m. Sensible business all round. the only reason it was sensible was that the club was in such a mess that they just HAD to do it. There was no continued, planned-for growth, no steady building, it was a panic situation both with Owen then with Martins. The hope has to be that Allardyce will have the confidence to build it up, to build a club, rather than build a signing. For Shepherd to be say that he was most proud of signing Shearer and Owen suggested that he was satisfied with trophy signings, rather than trophies.

I would have preferred us to sign Martins out of money that had gone into the club. If H&S had not taken £35m out in the previous 8 years we could have signed Martins and re-signed Woodgate, and still had £15m left over. We had to borrow money to buy Martins, we shouldn't have needed to borrow. He didn't just cost £13m, he cost £13m plus a pile of interest. How do you know we had to borrow money? Cos we already had an overdraft. There is also a line in the accounts saying "New borrowings" and it says £11m next to it. We took the "i-must-get-to-work-otherwise-i'll-not-be-able-to-earn-money-i-better-buy-a-ferrari" approach

We just went further into debt, the same as the year before when we suddenly aquired an overdraft for the first time, the overdraft was for £17 million. Northern Rock lent us the money for Owen you mean? When we signed Owen the club were given the sponsorship money that should have been given over subsequent seasons. It's hidden away as a wee note in the accounts.

I would have preferred us to sign Martins out of money that had gone into the club. If H&S had not taken £35m out in the previous 8 years we could have signed Martins and re-signed Woodgate, and still had £15m left over. We had to borrow money to buy Martins, we shouldn't have needed to borrow. He didn't just cost £13m, he cost £13m plus a pile of interest.

cos the the board were rubbish, had no idea how to run a club. Again you are looking at the worst example you can find and saying H&S are better. I'd rather look up rather than down for my aspirations. If you settle yourself that you're better than a McKeag or a Murray then you will never progress. Have some ambition man.

As the chairman said in his annual report the wages played to players were decided purely by the board. If the player wages are too high there was only one person to blame and that was Shepherd. He is responsible for all contractual agreements, be they the wages or the get-out clauses. This graph shows the consistency of the overspend, the graph does not show the £10m loss Shepherd managed between July1st and December 31st 2006. http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/profit5.gif and this last one how the worth of the club has progressed under Shepherd. Again the graph has to have a further £10m taken off it for the last 6 months of 2006. So 56 to 6 in 9 easy steps. http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/assets1.gif